GIS Education Weekly: GISCI Exam, Skills Competition Finalists, MOOC Update

GISCI Announces Exam Application Period!

The exclamation point in the press release (and above) illustrates how excited the organization is about the news, which appeared last Friday. Bottom line:

• Exam application period runs Monday, September 21 and closes October 9, 2015.
• Apply here.
• Exam Dates: Nov 12-17, 2015 at PSI Testing Centers.  I've never heard of this provider, but found nine in Massachusetts (on a Google Map!).
• Deal: Early qualified applicants can get $100 Application Fee and the $100 Portfolio Review Fee reimbursed.

Modeling Human Trafficking in St. Louis

As part of her master’s thesis at the University of Missouri—Columbia, Amanda Colegrove, director of the Crime Victim Advocacy Center’s Coalition Against Trafficking and Exploitation (CATE), thought about taking what researchers consider as risk factors for human trafficking and applying them to the landscape of St. Louis.

The idea, backed by the Washington University School of Medicine and Brown School of Social Work is to integrate data on topics that tend to encourage traffic to determine "hot zones," then see if in fact the predictions are accurate based on documented prosecutions. The study also looks at resources to prevent and respond to trafficking. Among the ideas floated are "UburHouse," a way to have those in community shelter victims until they can find permanent safe housing.

Geo For All Student Awards

Geo for All announced the winners of the OSGeo Student Awards for FOSS4G 2015, Seoul. Going forward, the Student Award initiative at FOSS4G conferences will be handled by the Geo for All team. There are no details on what the students won or how many students participated. I'd like to see both details included in future news releases.